Quality of life during first-line palliative chemotherapy for recurrent and metastatic head and neck cancer with weekly cisplatin and docetaxel.

Purpose: Quality of life (QOL) should be improved during palliative chemotherapy for end-stage recurrent head and neck cancer. Therefore, we evaluated QOL in head and neck cancer patients during palliative chemotherapy with cisplatin and docetaxel.

Methods: Thirty patients were included in a prospective study between 2003 and 2007. Response, time-to-progression, overall survival, performance, and toxicity were estimated. QOL was assessed using the EORTC QLQ-C30 and the QLQ-H&N35 questionnaires at baseline, and after each chemotherapy cycle.

Results: The response rate was 17%. Sixty-three percent had stable disease. The median time-to-progression was 3.5 months. The median overall survival was 9.2 months. The QLQ-C30 score constipation and the QLQ-H&N35 scores swallowing, senses problems, speech problems, coughing, weight gain showed significant improvement.

Conclusions: Only some aspects of QOL are maintained or improved. The QLQ-H&N35 questionnaire seems to be more appropriate to measure QOL, but needs to be improved to account for the peculiarities of modern palliative chemotherapy.